Various companies have for many years provided investment information so that investors can make informed investment decisions. Such information may include analyses of a company's share prices, price-to-earnings ratios (P/E), stock splits, profits, and the like on a yearly, quarterly or monthly basis. Investors typically receive such information in printed form by subscribing to one or more publications that contain information for a large number of companies. One disadvantage of these conventional approaches is that novice investors may not comprehend the many financial quantities reported for corporations or other investments, and they may have to pore over a large quantity of information compiled for all subscribers in order to identify information for one investment of interest.
More recently, the wide availability and use of computers by consumers has spawned new frontiers in the investment information field. Companies such as E*TRADE™ and others provide investment information to consumers on-line and in a more rapid fashion. Investors can subscribe to such services by paying a monthly fee to access databases of information regarding stocks, bonds, mutual funds and the like. In some cases, investors can arrange to be notified via e-mail when certain quantitative information matches a user-specified criterion. For example, an investor can now be notified via e-mail when the share price in a company of interest reaches a user-specified target price.
At the same time that investment information has become more accessible to ordinary consumers, the proliferation of investments, quantitative information (e.g., P/E ratios), and non-quantitative information (e.g., news reports) concerning those investments has complicated investment decisions for unsophisticated or novice investors. For example, a novice investor may have no idea what parameters would be important to track for a particular purpose, and may not appreciate what time period would be appropriate for tracking those parameters (e.g., quarterly, yearly, semi-annually, etc.).
Novice investors may have no way to correlate the quantitative information with other information such as news stories, financial analyst recommendations, and credit ratings. The proliferation of mutual funds in different market sectors, geographic regions, and other categories further complicates the investment decisions of the novice investor. In short, the volume of investment information can overwhelm ordinary investors, making it difficult to select investments without enlisting the personalized advice of a financial planner.